Renegade Futurist

Announcing: EsoZone Protocol - host an EsoZone in your city!

Klint Finley — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:58:06 +0000

We have now released the “EsoZone Protocol” - the standards for hosting an EsoZone in your own city.

Free. Sponsorships, voluntary donations, and tips are allowed, but tickets, fees, and mandatory donations are not. Selling merchandise, refreshments, etc. is ok.

Open. We understand some Esozones will have limited space, but attendence should not be limited to a certain group people or be “invite only.” Example: If an Esozone: UT Austin were being planned, it could NOT be limited to only UT students. Pre-Registration limits, first come first served entry, etc. are allowed. This does not mean that people can’t be ejected if they cause disruptions.

Unconference. Some pre-scheduled material may be incorporated, but Esozones will follow unconference principals and allow participants to set the agenda. Anyone can post a session.

Read the full document

Alan Moore collaborating with the Gorillaz, and more

Klint Finley — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:23:31 +0000

Mustard interviews Alan Moore about his new magazine Dodgem Logic and he reveals that he is doing the libretto for their next opera and they will hopefully be contributing a few pages to the magazine:

Then the issue after that we’ve hopefully got Gorillaz onboard. They came down to Northampton last week because we’re planning for me to do the libretto on their next opera project. Being an opportunist, I of course asked them if they’d be prepared to contribute some pages to Dodgem Logic. Rather than just doing an interview with them, I thought it would be interesting to hand over a few pages for them to curate.

Mustard: Alan Moore talks Dodgem Logic

(via 24 Bit via Joe Matheny)

Murdoch: We’ll probably remove our sites from Google’s index

Klint Finley — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:05:40 +0000

Rupert Murdoch has suggested that News Corporation is likely to make its content unfindable to users on Google when it launches its paid content starategy .

When Murdoch and other senior News Corp lieutenants have criticised aggregators such as Google for taking a free ride on its content, commentators have questioned why the company doesn’t simply make its content invisible to search engines.

Using the robots.txt protocol on a site indicates to automated web spiders such as Google’s not to index that particular page or to serve up lionks to it in users’ search results.

Murodch claimed that readers who randomly reach a page via search have little value to advertisers. Asked by Sky News political editor David Speers why News hasn’t therefore made its sites invisible to Google, Murdoch replied: “I think we will.”

Mumbrella: Murdoch: We’ll probably remove our sites from Google’s index

(via Jay Rosen)

I’d be quite happy to see News Corps shoot themselves in the foot, but I have the feeling people who actually know what they are talking about will stop this from happening.

Wall Street bonuses to rise 40%

Klint Finley — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:35:41 +0000

There has been plenty of evidence that firms like Goldman Sachs (GS) have had such huge profits that their bonus payouts may be at all-time highs.

The federal government has systematically begun to control bank pay packages. The Treasury “pay czar” is effectively controlling compensation at companies which still owe TARP money. The Fed is pressuring other large financial firms to tie pay to risk.

None of those efforts seems to be working well, because bankers are ignoring the signals from Washington.

A new compensation survey described in The Wall Street Journal predicts that Wall Street incentive pay will rise 40% this year. For those in the fixed-income part of the industry, the increase could be closer to 60%.

MSN Money: Wall Street bonuses to rise 40%

(via Braincrowbar)

Google unveils protocol for an interplanetary internet

Klint Finley — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:26:14 +0000

Vint Cerf, Google’s internet evangelist, has unveiled a new protocol intended to power an interplanetary internet.

The Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocol emerged from work first started in 1998 in partnership with Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The initial goal was to modify the ubiquitous Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) to facilitate robust communications between celestial bodies and satellites. [...]

The core issue is that TCP assumes a continuous (and fairly reliable) connection. DTN makes no such assumptions, requiring each node to buffer all of its packets until a stable connection can be established. Whereas TCP will repeatedly attempt to send packets until they are successfully acknowledged, DTN will automatically find a destination node with a reliable connection, and then send its payload just once. Given the latency of space communications and the minimal power restrictions placed upon satellites, DTNs approach seems prudent.

However most people don’t have a need for regular satellite communication (well, our columnist Warren Ellis has that death ray of his), but Cerf sees his robust protocol having more down-to-Earth applications. Mobile networks, for example, must regularly cope with long periods of delay or loss – a train tunnel rudely interrupting a YouTube stream, for example. Perhaps looking to gain an edge on its competitors, Google has already integrated DTN into Android’s networking stack.

Wired UK: Google unveils protocol for an interplanetary internet

(via Wade)

Birther Site Is Already Lying About Ft. Hood Shooter and Obama

Klint Finley — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:13:34 +0000

Jerome Corsi, of Swift Boat infamy, has written a piece connecting Nidal Malik Hasan to Obama on WorldNetDaily (”the leading source of disinformation that the president wasn’t born an American.”)

Corsi points to a Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University paper titled “Thinking Anew – Security Priorities for the Next Administration: Proceedings Report of the HSPI Presidential Transition Task Force” which lists Hasan as “Task Force Event Participant.”

What does that mean? It means Hasan, as Spencer Ackerman writes: “Hasan attended a meeting of a private organization that gave the transition some unsolicited advice.”

Washinton Independent: Birther Site Is Already Lying About Ft. Hood Shooter and Obama

(via Jeremy Scahill)

Free Evolver teleseminars for Mutate readers

Klint Finley — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:28:20 +0000

Update: we’ve got our responders. Thanks everyone!

Evolver has a special offer for Mutate readers:

Throughout human history, people have looked to the natural world for patterns to provide insight into their lives, and what might await them in the future. This is the origin of oracles and divination: the systematic approach to the deeper patterns of cosmos, mind, and nature. Over two weeks in November, you can join four of the world’s most sought-after divinatory teachers in a series of intimate conversations exploring the ways that these ancient traditions can transform your life. The Evolver Intensives tele-seminar series “Divination: How to Read the Future Now” is a unique opportunity to engage in discussions with four leaders at the vanguard of an archaic revival: celebrated spiritualist and Tarot expert Rachel Pollack; archetypal astrologer VerDarLuz; initiated diviner and I Ching scholar Stephen Karcher; and John Michael Greer, geomancer and Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America. Hosted by acclaimed author Erik Davis, take part in a life-changing journey through the deeper flows of reality.

More info

~~It costs $50, but the first 2 people to e-mail me at redacted will get it for free.~~ Offer is over, we’ve got our 2 people.

(I don’t have any relationship with Evolver, they’re making this offer so I thought I’d share it)

Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to be ‘raped with broken bottles’

Klint Finley — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:28:34 +0000

Just when you thought shit couldn’t get any worse:

The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country.

Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK’s ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

“I’m talking of people being raped with broken bottles,” he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network. “I’m talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I’m talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on.”

The Raw Story: Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to be ‘raped with broken bottles’

(via Cryptogon)

Goldman Sachs Official Says Jesus Embraced Greed

Klint Finley — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:19:03 +0000

I didn’t believe this story was true at first — thought it had to be a spoof. But it turns out to be true. The great banks of the world have gone on a p.r. counteroffensive in Europe, and are sending spokescrooks in shiny suits into churches to persuade the masses that Christ would have approved of the latest round of obscene bonuses.

Goldman Sachs international adviser Brian Griffiths explains it this way: that Christ’s famous injunction to love others as one would love oneself actually means that one should love oneself as one would love oneself. This seemingly baffling outburst by a Goldman executive in what appears to have been a prepared speech — someone actually wrote this, and thought about it, before saying it out loud — gets even weirder when one tries to figure out what could possibly have motivated this person, and by extension his employer Goldman Sachs, to make such statements in such a place as St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Matt Taibbi: Goldman One-Ups Gordon Gekko, Says Jesus Embraced Greed

Update: Anyone who’s been reading this blog for a while will be familiar with The Family. Reader Joe points out in the comments:

This shouldn’t be surprising for anyone who has read Jeff Sharlet’s book _The Family_. This rhetoric is straight out of their play book. This guy is likely a member (he *spoke at* the funeral of Wallace Haines, The Family’s ‘man in Europe’, in 2007). http://www.wallacehaines.com/inmemoryof.htm

The plot sickens.

New Gadgetto album: Crystal Radio (free)

Klint Finley — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:57:22 +0000

Gadgetto: Crystal Radio

Global poverty down between 1970 and 2006

Klint Finley — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:11:26 +0000

We use a parametric method to estimate the income distribution for 191 countries between 1970 and 2006. We estimate the World Distribution of Income and estimate poverty rates, poverty counts and various measures of income inequality and welfare. Using the official $1/day line, we estimate that world poverty rates have fallen by 80% from 0.268 in 1970 to 0.054 in 2006. The corresponding total number of poor has fallen from 403 million in 1970 to 152 million in 2006. Our estimates of the global poverty count in 2006 are much smaller than found by other researchers. We also find similar reductions in poverty if we use other poverty lines. We find that various measures of global inequality have declined substantially and measures of global welfare increased by somewhere between 128% and 145%. We analyze poverty in various regions. Finally, we show that our results are robust to a battery of sensitivity tests involving functional forms, data sources for the largest countries, methods of interpolating and extrapolating missing data, and dealing with survey misreporting.

National Bureau of Economics Research: Parametric Estimations of the World Distribution of Income

(via Overcoming Bias)

Gun owners more likely to be shot than non-gun owners

Klint Finley — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:02:33 +0000

This should come as no surprise. Brandishing a gun is a good way to get yourself shot.

Results. After adjustment, individuals in possession of a gun were 4.46 (P < .05) times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession. Among gun assaults where the victim had at least some chance to resist, this adjusted odds ratio increased to 5.45 (P < .05).

Conclusions. On average, guns did not protect those who possessed them from being shot in an assault. Although successful defensive gun uses occur each year, the probability of success may be low for civilian gun users in urban areas. Such users should reconsider their possession of guns or, at least, understand that regular possession necessitates careful safety countermeasures.

American Public Health Association:
Investigating the Link Between Gun Possession and Gun Assault

(via Disinfo)

Alejandro Jodorowsky Gets Funding for Dream Project ‘Abel Cain’

Klint Finley — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:04:15 +0000

In May it was announced that Jodorowsky was going to work with acclaimed director David Lynch on King Shot which was described as a “metaphysical spaghetti western.” Though he hasn’t exactly been relevant in contemporary filmmaking over the past two decades, it looks like his work with Lynch has paid off as Quiet Earth reports that he now has the funding needed to make his dream project Abel Cain.

Jodorowsky calls the film “the sons of El Topo” (see above), a nod to his 1970 revisionist western El Topo. The story follows Abel and Cain who, upon the death of their mother, embark on a journey to bury her holy body next to their father’s grave on a forbidden paradise island.

First Showing: Alejandro Jodorowsky Gets Funding for Dream Project ‘Abel Cain’

(Thanks Neko)

A court decision that reflects what type of country the U.S. is

Klint Finley — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:45:41 +0000

It’s not often that an appellate court decision reflects so vividly what a country has become, but such is the case with yesterday’s ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Arar v. Ashcroft (.pdf). Maher Arar is both a Canadian and Syrian citizen of Syrian descent. A telecommunications engineer and graduate of Montreal’s McGill University, he has lived in Canada since he’s 17 years old. In 2002, he was returning home to Canada from vacation when, on a stopover at JFK Airport, he was (a) detained by U.S. officials, (b) accused of being a Terrorist, (c) held for two weeks incommunicado and without access to counsel while he was abusively interrogated, and then (d) was “rendered” — despite his pleas that he would be tortured — to Syria, to be interrogated and tortured. He remained in Syria for the next 10 months under the most brutal and inhumane conditions imaginable, where he was repeatedly tortured. Everyone acknowledges that Arar was never involved with Terrorism and was guilty of nothing. I’ve appended to the end of this post the graphic description from a dissenting judge of what was done to Arar while in American custody and then in Syria.

In January, 2007, the Canadian Prime Minister publicly apologized to Arar for the role Canada played in these events, and the Canadian government paid him $9 million in compensation. That was preceded by a full investigation by Canadian authorities and the public disclosure of a detailed report which concluded “categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constituted a threat to the security of Canada.” By stark and very revealing contrast, the U.S. Government has never admitted any wrongdoing or even spoken publicly about what it did; to the contrary, it repeatedly insisted that courts were barred from examining the conduct of government officials because what we did to Arar involves “state secrets” and because courts should not interfere in the actions of the Executive where national security is involved. What does that behavioral disparity between the two nations say about how “democratic,” “accountable,” and “open” the United States is? [...]

This is precisely how the character of a country becomes fundamentally degraded when it becomes a state in permanent war. So continuous are the inhumane and brutal acts of government leaders that the citizens completely lose the capacity for moral outrage and horror. The permanent claims of existential threats from an endless array of enemies means that secrecy is paramount, accountability is deemed a luxury, and National Security trumps every other consideration — even including basic liberties and the rule of law. Worst of all, the President takes on the attributes of a protector-deity who can and must never be questioned lest we prevent him from keeping us safe.

Glenn Greenwald: A court decision that reflects what type of country the U.S. is

Man walks a marathon around his block

Klint Finley — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:03:47 +0000

On Sunday morning, 40,000 people will run, walk and wheel their way 26.2 miles through New York’s five boroughs in a whirlwind tour of the city at its most festive. My personal marathon, restricted to the long rectangle created by Baltic and Warren Streets and Fourth and Fifth Avenues in Park Slope, Brooklyn, offered something more subtle: a glimpse at a day in the life of my neighborhood.

The idea came to me on my umpteenth walk with Barnaby, a basset hound with a trace of beagle that we adopted from a shelter in June. Somehow, the thought “This is pathetic — I’m walking miles every day without getting anywhere” morphed into “What if we kept walking — without going anywhere? Wouldn’t that be kind of cool?”

Suddenly, the dutiful, oddly agrarian-feeling urban activity of escorting an animal outdoors for nature’s call took on the urgency of adventure. With the hound as social lubricant, I would immerse myself in the quotidian rhythms and stutter-steps of the block, watching its lives intersect or sometimes — it’s a neighborly block, but this is New York City, after all — float by one another without acknowledgment.

New York Times: Block-a-Thon

(via Eva)

Culture Is More Important Than Genes To Altruistic Behavior In Large-scale Societies

Klint Finley — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:53:27 +0000

Socially learned behavior and belief are much better candidates than genetics to explain the self-sacrificing behavior we see among strangers in societies, from soldiers to blood donors to those who contribute to food banks.

This is the conclusion of a study by Adrian V. Bell and colleagues from the University of California Davis in the Oct. 12 edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Altruism has long been a subject of interest to evolutionary social scientists. Altruism presents them with a difficult line to argue: behaviors that help unrelated people while being costly to the individual and creating a risk for genetic descendants could not likely be favored by evolution: at least by common evolutionary arguments.

The researchers used a mathematical equation, called the Price equation, that describes the conditions for altruism to evolve. This equation motivated the researchers to compare the genetic and the cultural differentiation between neighboring social groups. Using previously calculated estimates of genetic differences, they used the World Values Survey (whose questions are likely to be heavily influenced by culture in a large number of countries) as a source of data to compute the cultural differentiation between the same neighboring groups. When compared they found that the role of culture had a much greater scope for explaining our pro-social behavior than genetics.

Science Daily: Culture Is More Important Than Genes To Altruistic Behavior In Large-scale Societies

Research Shows Chronically Ill Patients Might Be Happier if They Give Up Hope

Klint Finley — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:36:00 +0000

Holding on to hope may not make patients happier as they deal with chronic illness or diseases, according to a new study by University of Michigan Health System researchers.

“Hope is an important part of happiness,” said Peter A. Ubel, M.D., director of the U-M Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine and one of the authors of the happily hopeless study, “but there’s a dark side of hope. Sometimes, if hope makes people put off getting on with their life, it can get in the way of happiness.”

The results showed that people do not adapt well to situations if they are believed to be short-term. Ubel and his co-authors — both from U-M and Carnegie Mellon University — studied patients who had new colostomies: their colons were removed and they had to have bowel movements in a pouch that lies
outside their body.

At the time they received their colostomy, some patients were told that the colostomy was reversible — that they would undergo a second operation to reconnect their bowels after several months. Others were told that the colostomy was permanent and that they would never have normal bowel function again. The second group — the one without hope — reported being happier over the next six months than those with reversible colostomies.

Reuters: Research Shows Chronically Ill Patients Might Be Happier if They Give Up Hope

(via Disinfo)

How Ayn Rand Became an American Icon

Klint Finley — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:11:30 +0000

Ayn Rand is one of America’s great mysteries. She was an amphetamine-addicted author of sub-Dan Brown potboilers, who in her spare time wrote lavish torrents of praise for serial killers and the Bernie Madoff-style embezzlers of her day. She opposed democracy on the grounds that “the masses”—her readers—were “lice” and “parasites” who scarcely deserved to live. Yet she remains one of the most popular writers in the United States, still selling 800,000 books a year from beyond the grave. She regularly tops any list of books that Americans say have most influenced them. Since the great crash of 2008, her writing has had another Benzedrine rush, as Rush Limbaugh hails her as a prophetess. With her assertions that government is “evil” and selfishness is “the only virtue,” she is the patron saint of the tea-partiers and the death panel doomsters. So how did this little Russian bomb of pure immorality in a black wig become an American icon?

Two new biographies of Rand—Goddess of the Market by Jennifer Burns and Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne Heller—try to puzzle out this question, showing how her arguments found an echo in the darkest corners of American political life.* But the books work best, for me, on a level I didn’t expect. They are thrilling psychological portraits of a horribly damaged woman who deserves the one thing she spent her life raging against: compassion.

Slate: How Ayn Rand Became an American Icon

(via Cat Vincent)

The author of this pieces identifies her philosophy with Nietzsche, but Max Stirner was probably a more important influence.

See also: Ayn Rand’s Revenge (Thanks to Bill)

Dean Baker: Breaking up the banks is hard to do

Klint Finley — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:45:13 +0000

Those who like banks that are too big to fail will love the latest financial reform proposals circulating in the US Congress. The bill put forward by Barney Frank, the chairman of the House finance committee, does little to change the current structure of the financial system.

The “too-big-to-fail” banks will be left in place, even bigger and less accountable than before. There will be nothing done to separate commercial and investment banking, so giants like Goldman Sachs will be free to speculate with money guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The main difference is that the Federal Reserve Board will be granted even more power than it has now. And, we will tell the Fed to be smarter in the future, so that it doesn’t make the same stupid mistakes that gave us the current crisis. [...]

The bottom line is that this bill is almost certain to leave the taxpayers holding the bag for future bailouts. Even worse, it does nothing about the moral hazard created by having institutions that are too big to fail. There is nothing in the bill to lead creditors to believe that the government will not make good on their loans to Goldman, JP Morgan and the other banking behemoths.

Guardian: Breaking up the banks is hard to do

Cult Cartoonist Robert Crumb reveals he is a Gnostic

Klint Finley — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:28:56 +0000

Underground comic artist Robert Crumb has recently joined the ranks of the perennial heretics known as the Gnostics. According to an Agence France-Presse report, Crumb admitted he was a Gnostic during a press conference for the international launch of ‘The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb’. This announcement, along with his new book, reveals for the first time the theological leanings of an important cult figure. Crumb is best known for his ‘Fritz the Cat’ and ‘American Splendor’ comics.

“The Bible is not the word of God. It’s the words of men,” he said at the press conference in Paris. “I take it all as myth from start to finish.” This attitude was echoed by the ancient Gnostics, who saw Holy Scripture as a tool of dominance from oppressive religious institutions and embraced mythology as a vehicle for spiritual liberation.

Examiner: Cult Cartoonist Robert Crumb reveals he is a Gnostic

(via Wade)

A couple people have expressed skepticism about Crumb’s Gnosticism based on the article linked, and the article that article cites. Here is an interview with Crumb in Vanity Fair where he says very clearly that he is a Gnostic:

I would call myself a Gnostic. Which means, I’m interested in pursuing and understanding the spiritual nature of things. A Gnostic is somebody seeking knowledge of that aspect of reality. That’s more of an Eastern idea, like Buddhism.

More light is shed on his spiritual beliefs in this interview.